


Fireside

by CALira



Series: Aaron and Eric walking through the dead. [2]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, M/M, Multi, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 20:43:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4073233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CALira/pseuds/CALira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>516 Conquer:  The Townsfolk. That Chair. Why he's not allowed to speak in the episode.</p><p>What was Eric thinking about before the bonfire meeting?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fireside

Each lurching step forward drove the hard rubber pads of Eric's crutches deeper into the join beneath his shoulder and arm. His axillary nerves demanded periodical respite, and the countless pit stops significantly slowed his ambulatory progress. It took him the better part of an hour to bruise his way to Deanna's Fireside Witch Hunt and Rickie Roast. 

Once officially in attendance at the meeting and seated by the open fire, Eric noticed that his broken ankle was swelling drastically within its plaster binding. The mounting pressure increased his pain exponentially. In fact, the cartoon smiley face on his pain scale was not only in deep distress but it was growing horns and a goatee. 

_'Walking cast, my ass!'_ , he thought to himself. 

Pain and frustration were making him uncharacteristically cranky...and kind of bitchy. He regretted his decision to forgo taking any pain medication in favor of being lucid.

His ankle screamed at him for attention. A blast of frigid wind made its way past the small bonfire and sliced through the knitting break like an icicle through a scrotal nerve.

Cold, moody and throbbing (and not in a fun way), Eric's thoughts were saltier than they had been in a while. _'This is the coldest damn fire I've ever had the privilege of freezing my balls off by.'_

He leaned in closer to the flames and looked pensive. _'Ah. I'm sorry, little fire. It's not your fault. It's the shitty aura of the ass wipe company I'm keeping.'_ He rolled his eyes, _'Even my swearing is lame.'_ With a deep sigh he added, ' _'Pale and thin, too.'_

A hint of a smile suggested itself across his face. He could only think to himself, with an amused huff, _'Damn and it.'_

The slowly churning bile was beginning to taste bad, but he didn't care. Tonight he wanted to be ugly and awful and wallow in the muck of feeling sorry for himself. He just didn't want any of the disingenuous citizenry to know about it. It was personal. A tantrum to be savored not shared.

Usually, when he was forced to be around the denizens within the walls of the hostile town, he quietly slipped on the mask of lovable congeniality and mindless civility that was expected of him. To be honest, that was his true nature, but sometimes it was hard to be his genuine self. Especially when he was alone in a crowd of hypocritical neighbors. So he often resorted to pretending that he was just fine.

With Aaron away on a recruiting jag, Eric didn't even bother with the mask. It just wasn't in him tonight to fake civility and conviviality with the townsfolk. Aaron was the only one he cared about pleasing. In his absence, the mask was too exhausting to maintain for people he just didn't give a damn about impressing. 

Fortunately, the mask wasn't his only option. He had long ago mastered a “thousand yard stare” that he could hide behind. Although he was never someone you would call shy, he did know what it was to feel unwelcome. Before and after the Big Decay. The stare was a useful tactic in hiding in plain sight and avoiding communication.

He sat at the leading edge of light from the popping fire. Leaning back in his chair he struck a mild “schoolboy on picture day with leg sticking out” pose and stared blankly into the dancing flames at his feet. He let his mind drift and was transported to a point in space that was, well, a thousand yards away. Without the distractions of whinging about his physical pain and how to hide from the neighbors, Eric's mind returned to where it always returned these days. 

He was tormented by wanting, waiting and worrying about Aaron. Deep in enemy territory without him on his six. There was a tiny blip of comfort in the knowledge that at least Aaron wasn't hunting big game survivors out there alone. Daryl was running shotgun. _'Shot bow, maybe?'_ a brief twitch pulled weakly at the corner of his lips. 

Daryl had become a dear friend and was as close to Aaron and Eric as he could be to anyone while carrying around that black musty backpack of trauma and gloom that was his past. He was a good person, another member of the unwelcome outliers collective and definitely happier with the nature stuff than Eric. He wholeheartedly approved of the partnership with Daryl. They would both be safer out there now and that eased Eric's worry just enough to allow them out of the compound without throwing himself across the hood of the car. 

_'The emissary and the bowman', he smiled fondly._

The two of them had so much in common that their friendship just made sense. They were both wilderness refuges and violently protective family men. Although Eric didn't fit well into either camp, he was good with Aaron and Daryl's friendship. The camp bunk he did share with Aaron was perfect; profound and amazing and all he could ever want.

Despite what the neighbors wanted to poison his mind with through their whispered innuendos and downright whooped taunts concerning fidelity, attractiveness and who could take the rougher sex, Eric just wasn't jealous of the caped-recruiters and their kinship. After all, Aaron's photo was featured under “faithfully loyal boyfriend” in the Encyclopedia Romantica and Daryl simply wasn't a romantic threat.

 _'He is sexy in his incredible, feral way, but Aaron has a very distinct type that runs more toward exquisite willowy redheads – that **are** gay.'_ His face lightened a bit with a slight upward flex of his lips and a small eyebrow skip.

Then his face flat lined again. His mind returned to obsessive thoughts about Aaron and the danger he and Daryl both faced out there. As if indulging that particular psychosis could bring them home safely any sooner. 

The fact was that Aaron and Daryl were off actively seeking danger and that was killing Eric. He madly loved the one man and just wanted to save the other from himself. And they were out in the thick of the Stumble-pocalypse with no way to indicate their status, progress or condition. And no way to help them even if he knew. Worry slowly tore Eric apart into ragged chunks of fear and loneliness.

But worrying felt like the only thing that he had left to hold onto. So until the pair returned, fear would continue to own him. When Aaron was away for whatever reason, Eric woke up most nights horrifically alone in the darkness, heart racing, gasping for air and trying not to cry. Aaron was everything. He always had and always would be the sun to his galaxy. He desperately needed that orbital gravity even if just to sleep peacefully.

The nightmares began the night he learned that Aaron wouldn't let him be his backup anymore. Monster mashed, fileted by allegedly human hands; his subconscious mind conjured unbidden images of horror that made Hell seem like a Fijian resort. Like most things that would worry Aaron, Eric kept the arrival of Satan's Slide Show to himself. _'He has more important and dangerous things to worry about than my pathetic little internal crisis.'_

It was times like this, when Aaron was away, that Eric realized how foolish, naive and duplicitous the townsfolk were at heart. They believed that the tenets of suburbia still applied. Behind their tin walls, they thought themselves safe from all that the real world had become. And above all, they were actually convinced that they could maintain a class system and the underlying bigotry and ignorance it bred. It made Eric suspicious of everyone's motives and behaviors. And his thoughts about this fireside meeting were no different.

As soon as he had entered the light pit, someone took his crutches to "keep anyone from tripping over them". If you asked him they wound up leaning against a wall that was unnecessarily beyond his reach. That ruined any plans to bolt he may have entertained. _'No quick escapes tonight, gimpy.'_

_'Who do I think I'm kidding,'_ he added with a joyless smile. Stealth was impossible with the stupid cast on his leg even when his ankle wasn't a melon packed in dry ice. 

At least they had planted him close to the fire. _'Real close,'_ he thought as he picked ember flotsam off his sweater and carefully color-matched pants. _'But, I'll take it._

_'They probably just want to keep tabs on my whereabouts. Don't want someone like me sneaking up behind them after all.'_ Sometimes sarcasm was his only solace.

The firelight illuminated the only empty chair in the courtyard that just so happened to sit at Eric's immediate right. Ostensibly, it was left unoccupied for Aaron in case he got back from the road in time to attend.

 _'Mm hmm',_ Eric had to call bull shit on that one.

_'Okay. So where is the welcoming place setting for Daryl? He's out there too. Or for any of the people not here yet. Hell, where's the one for Rick? Even defendants have the right to take a load off.'_

Another feeble but annoyingly hurtful attempt to remind him he had been abandoned and replaced. By extension, that same sex couples are only subversive aberrations of love and therefore will never last. He was just surprised the chair wasn't labeled with a funereal doily inscribed with both Aaron's name and the letters R.I.P.

With a brief disapproving grunt at the obnoxious tribute to Aaron's absence, Eric forcibly lifted his conscious mind from the cauldron of bile that was madly bubbling behind his eyes to surreptitiously flick his solemn gaze at his wristwatch. Fourteen hours and nine minutes had passed since Aaron and Daryl left on their recruiting run. 

It was still early in the moonless autumn night, but there wasn't even a whiff of them on the air. He knew from his time in the trenches that runs going into the night meant trouble. His only reason for living and a new good friend were in the wind. Each passing hour spun his mind another full spiraling revolution in his brain.

It was a difficult time for him to remain positive or pleasant. His niceness gene had taken quite the beating after his last recruiting run. That was when he had suddenly and ungraciously been informed that it was decided on high, by the sovereign will of Aaron, that Eric would be left behind “where it's safe” from now on. Even after his ankle healed. It was also decreed that he would stay indoors exclusively until such time as Aaron returned. 

For being a diplomatic kind of guy professionally, Aaron could be quite unreasonable when it came to Eric's safety. “Really? House arrest is the best suggestion you could come up with? Being without you is already prison enough!”, he had stubbornly argued in vain during one of the several heated discussions that had played out repeatedly since his wings were clipped and the feathers used to stuff a throw pillow. 

Eventually he recognized that he was indeed a liability to Aaron out in the field. Ever since the horror-flick-girlfriend-ankle fiasco, Aaron seemed unable to fully concentrate on anything except Eric's well being. He was a distraction that could no longer be put on the back burner when needed. A distraction that could get Aaron killed.

That was when he begrudgingly accepted that Aaron was justified in his decision. Eric needed to stay home. It was time to prioritize and the constant arguing with an immovably determined Aaron was a waste of what little time they had left to be together in the cold shadow of the apocalypse. 

From that moment on, Eric spent every second, waking or not, holding Aaron close enough to commit everything about him to memory. He spoiled his loving curly top rotten: doting on him incessantly and screwing his brains out whenever he had the chance. Eric was exhausted, and a little dehydrated, but he had made his peace with Aaron's decision. 

_'Staying in the house alone isn't so bad. I'll just keep spending the time perfecting the really long nap,'_ he tried to cheer himself. He managed to make it up to weakly amused but was still all too aware that he was growing disturbingly adept at that nap thing.

In fact, if there hadn't been the royal summons from Deanna he would still be on the couch under a blanket and drooling on the cushions. Eric didn't want to be at this farce of a meeting. He'd rather have remained squirreled away in the house where Aaron wanted him to stay. The empty, cold, deafeningly silent, darkly foreboding house that was the only place he felt like being anymore. 

_'Damn! Despite the crap I gave smug-butt smarty pants Aaron about it, rattling around the mausoleum is much more pleasant than being out and about alone among the populace,'_ he admitted to himself with a half-hearted huff of weak indignation.

He never thought he could feel this lonely while surrounded by so many people.

However, royal decrees outrank both boyfriend orders and personal feelings. The town heralds had delivered the message and Eric's name was theatrically checked off a list secured onto a pretentious acrylic clipboard laser-etched with the town's name. There was no pulling the ankle card and staying home after that display. 

_'Meh,' he shrugged. 'It won't kill me to play at being as good a citizen as I can stomach.'_

If he couldn't be Aaron's back up then he'd do the one thing he did best for Aaron - while vertical anyway. Eric had a weirdly useful gift for recon and gathering Intel. When applied in town settings it was often jealously referred to by others as prying and gossiping. The most useful thing he could do for Aaron was keep tabs on the town's intentions at this panic driven mad scramble of a meeting.

He wasn't really sure why they wanted him at the meeting in the first place. He hadn't been on the street when Constable Rick lost it and blood was strewn across existence. He was never asked for his two cents about anything town related. And now, he didn't even have a role in the community anymore and had no right to speak out of turn. 

Of course, that wasn't why he wouldn’t be asked for his testimony ...uhm... opinion of Rick's character. Even though Eric had been there in the woods right next to Aaron studying these people, Eric's opinion meant nothing to any of them. Aaron though, was more than competent and kind of scary. Him, they could use. Him, they needed. On the other hand, the town made it quite clear that they thought Eric was just the skinny little flower growing in Aaron's garden. Eric didn't care as long as looking at that flower made Aaron happy.

His flame singed retinas needed a break and he rolled his empty gaze toward nothing in particular in the general direction of left. His burly henchman of a boyfriend didn't know the extent of the abusive homophobic crap that flowed Eric's way when he wasn't around.

 _'..and he isn't ever going to hear anything about it from this grown ass man,'_ Eric thought determinedly. 

There was no way that he would intentionally make Aaron's life any harder than it already was. His plaid knight already carried an unacceptably large burden on those broad shoulders. Eric would rather lose the damn foot than even hint to Aaron that the crutches might make it not so safe for him to stay in town either. At least nothing would try and eat him here. A little emotional chewing maybe, but no real threat to life or limb.

He mused idly, _'Just how did so many hateful idiots survive into the afterworld?'_

After a brief pause, he shrugged. _'I guess even the apocalypse has its standards.'_

Eric wondered if the homophobic stage whispers were ever made within Aaron's ear shot. He bet they weren't. Aaron had once told him that he thought the town was afraid of him in more than the oh-no-he's-gay kind of way. They should be.

Aaron had an aura of vengeance about him. The good-natured best friend that smiled as he beat whoever hurt you into compost. Everyone knew that Aaron had the aggression and strength to make things ugly at the Oh No Corral. 

No, he was fairly sure that Aaron wasn't scheduled for any detectible visits from the whispering moron patrol. Well, not more than one anyway.

The idea that Aaron was most likely spared at least that one source of pain gave Eric his first real reason to smile in a long time. Fourteen hours and twenty seven minutes to be exact.

Eric thought about his own usual strategy against the whispering campaign: feigning sudden hearing loss. It wasn't very effective. The bigoted static kept hatefully crackling. He could only assume that the best worst material was lovingly reserved for him on the rare times Aaron wasn't around. These days that meant Eric hunting season was perpetually open.

 _'They know I won't say squat about any of it to my game warden,'_ he sneered.

'Everybody welcome to Jackasspalooza!' He grimaced.

 _'Ow! I think I pulled a sarcasm muscle on that one,'_ he twisted his torso uncomfortably.

It was the muscles of Eric's arms however that were metaphorically sore from all the self-pity and whining he was juggling. None of it was purging itself by being brought to the forefront and exposed to the cleansing air as he had hoped. He blinked slowly over a long thin sigh. 

Being a sarcastic bitch was tiring. And he was too exhausted to continue doing something so exhausting. It was time for Scared Eric to go home. Happy Eric was a lot more fun. (Not to be confused with Gay Eric who was an entirely different kind of fun.) It was time to get Happy Eric off his lazy butt and back on duty at the front desk of Chez Eriq.

Happy Eric's first thought was always the same – Aaron. And it was indeed a happy thought. Right now his opening Aaron-thought was of how truly proud he was of his lambswool brunette boyfriend with the luminous blue gray eyes. 

Aaron and his opinion were valued by this walled up circus rodeo. The people of Alexandria for once actually understood something important. What Aaron brought to the community increased everyone’s chance of survival. And they listened to him.

_'Of course Aaron's opinion and testimony can't do much good when he isn't here to giv....'_

Eric froze suddenly, only his chocolate-in-moonlight eyes darting back and forth.

 _'Uhm. What' s happening? How long has Deanna been talking?',_ he rapidly backed away from his panic reflex and started to pay attention. 

_'Recon time.'_

He really was good at that. He saw much more than people thought he did. Tonight was both his call to duty and privileged opportunity to do right by his better half.

He tuned into the show already in progress, “....here tonight because one of our constables...”

**Author's Note:**

> Set right before the bonfire meeting of 516 Conquer
> 
> Had trouble making this one gel. Supposed to be about isolation, alienation, loneliness and belonging. Not so sure it got there. Oh,well.
> 
> Long-winded and unfocused - Enjoy!


End file.
